Weekday Rice Bowl

 One of the bounties of the Santa Monica Farmers' Market was the availability of fresh ginger root, possibly the best ginger I have ever had. I began hashing together some ginger based sauces and came up with this for a weekday meal:

one inch ginger, thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, microplaned

3 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp mirin

1 tbsp fish sauce

(You can double this recipe easily and store it, which is a nice way to save some labor for a meal next week).

If I am cooking salmon, then I sous vide up three fillets at 110 degrees for forty minutes (if frozen), and then carefully remove them and let them soak in the marinade. If doing mushrooms, then I presoak the mushrooms in the marinade. In either case, reserve the marinade as a sauce for the bowl.

Optional: add green onions, quartered or thinly sliced

Optional: sous vide some soft boiled eggs (8.5 minutes@194). This can be done up in advance, of course, but I find it a good protein for a vegetarian rice bowl.

While the cooking is happening, 

prepare a vegetable in the steamer. Get it ready to go. 

Get the rice ready to go, and then set them to be done all at the same time.

Chop up an avocado

If salmon, I typically dry the fillets and cook them at high heat to crisp up the skin. If mushrooms then, just strain out the marinade and cook.

Once the rice is ready, spoon into bowls, add the mushrooms or salmon (skin side up), cut the egg in half (vertically). Add the chopped avocado. Top with Bonito Flakes, sriracha mayo,  and the sauce.

I typically serve this with steamed bok choi, on the side. 

 

weekday salmon

perfected the weekday salmon recipe

one salmon side, skin on, 1 to 1.2 pounds. Cut into three fillets.
Salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

(prepare sides while rice in cooker is ... cooking)

Prepare iron skillet at high heat. Pour in olive oil. Just enough to coat the pan.
Put salmon fillet side down into skillet. cook 1 and 1/2 minutes.
Flip fillets. Cook for 1 and 1/2 minutes
Add a half tablespoon of butter. Cook for 3 minutes.

If adjusting time, keep in mind that the butter will smoke, so only add it for the last three minutes, at the most.

Remove the salmon to a plate with a paper towel. Prepare plates and serve.

Thick salmon pieces will be medium rare, thin ones will be medium to medium well if cooked to these specs. You can always pull the thin end of the salmon off early.

Salmon on the Grill

Simplicity ought to be a virtue in grilling, at least when you want the flavor of the meat and the quality of its preparation to shine. As such, I am experimenting with a very simple method of grilling atlantic salmon fillets. The fillets are huge (two weighing nearly one pound each). They are also, unfortunately, unequally thawed. One is fine; the second is thawed enough to allow me to move forward, I believe.

I am putting them on tinfoil on the grill, and basting them with a lemon-butter-parsley-sea salt sauce. Roughly 1-2 tablespoons butter, quarter wedge of lemon, few sprigs of parsley.

I set up the Big Green Egg for indirect cooking, laid down a sheet of tinfoil, and stuck the salmon fillets on with the grill still heating up. It took approximately 5 minutes to hit 300-350 degrees. I'm having difficulty with heat on my grill right now. It's time for a serious cleaning.

Start cooking time at 6:00. By 6:05, hit 380. Shortly after, 400. Holding steady there. Pulled it off shortly after 6:20. The total cooking time was likely 25 minutes. Big Green Egg recipes said 18 minutes at 450, so we'll see how this stacks up.

UPDATE: the salmon was delicious. Not overcooked, but definitely on the medium side. Could have been a little less done. A nice presentation, too.

Salmon in the Oven

Last night, took a wild sockeye salmon filet and broiled it with a lemon butter sauce. Not a pleasant return, frankly. Perhaps I broiled it long (and of course, I didn't record the time).

Tonight, I am trying to bake a salmon filet with a mayo-dijon-sea salt sauce.

Baked at 400 for about twenty-five minutes (time may be off). It worked quite well. Salmon was tender, and the sauce yielded a creamy crust. If baking, I would do this again.